Sadly it appears that any film adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra’s Y: The Last Man is on hold for now. A film version of the comic series published by DC’s Vertigo label has been in development for several years, the latest director attached to the project was former co-host of the now ended Totally Rad Show – Dan Trachtenberg.
The rights for the film have now reverted back from New Line Cinema to Brian K. Vaughan, with no announcement so far of any alternative options for translating it to a film being explored. During its life in development hell, director D.J. Caruso was attached for the longest period of time before the project was passed over to Trachtenberg.
It has been reported that under Caruso’s development, New Line Cinema were adamant that the film be developed to work as a stand along feature, which as any fan of the comic book series could tell you, is simply unfeasible, or would require such a large compromise that it’d be difficult at best to retain the spirit of the story in the comics.
With several re-writes along the way, Trachtenberg’s version has been reported to have focused on the first ten issues of the 60 issues series, serving as a partial compromise between the position of delivering a self-contained film but one that could be continued if successful.
With New Line Cinema no longer holding the film rights for Y, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens next, but for the time being, it appears incredibly unlikely that much will happen. Given the success of shows such as The Walking Dead, and Arrow, and with the upcoming Constantine and Gotham, it’s hard to think that Y: The Last Man wouldn’t be better served as a TV series adaptation.
Hopefully AMC or HBO are paying attention.
